Become a better writer in 3 simple steps.
3 ways to become a better writer [each one takes under 90 seconds to learn].
1. Read your writing out loud.
Your ear catches what your eye misses.
Clunky sentences, repeated words, and awkward phrasing all reveal themselves the moment you hear them. If you stumble reading it, your reader will too.
This one habit alone will do more for your writing than any course, any book, or any amount of staring at a screen willing the words to get better. Your voice already knows what sounds right. Trust it.
2. Cut the last sentence of every paragraph.
Writers almost always over-explain. That final sentence? It's usually just saying what you already said. Delete it.
The paragraph almost always gets stronger and clearer without it. Readers don't need you to land the plane twice.
3. Replace weak "to be" verbs with action verbs.
"She was nervous" → "Her hands shook." "He is a good leader" → "He walks into a room and people listened."
Strong verbs do the heavy lifting that adjectives and adverbs try and fail to do. When you prop a sentence up with was, is, are, were, you're telling the reader what to think. When you use action verbs, you show them something real—and they think it themselves. That's the difference between writing that informs and writing that moves people.
The secret all three share: Good writing is rewriting.
The first draft gets the ideas out. Everything after that is about making the reader feel something.
The Go and Do
I don't want to be another newsletter in your inbox. I want to be an actionletter. In every edition, I'll include a "Go-and-Do" below to help you take an action step TODAY that improves your LinkedIn™ performance, your business, or even your life.
Pull up something you've written recently — a post, an email, a proposal, anything. Run it through all three filters right now. Read it out loud and mark where you stumble. Cut the last sentence of at least two paragraphs. Find one "was" or "is" and swap it for an action verb. Don't rewrite the whole thing. Just make three cuts. You'll be surprised what's left.